Thank you! Decided to pass on Fixdry and get a kitchen dehydrator Graef
I found this. because we are on this topic, maybe can give some though if this unit is really usefull. the spec I found is that this is for fruit dehydrator:
Capacity: 3 KG
Control method: mechanic
electricity: 220V
power: 345W
Frekuenzie: 50-60HZ
Body material: PP/PS
capacity: 5 level
heat method: heated with heating element
heating level: 8 level
product size: 280280320mm.
is this a good one to choose for filament dehydrator? cheapest one I can buy…
I apologize it’s not posted yet, but if you want to check out “Filament drying preliminary results”, if that’s something you would be interested in, it won’t work with a food dehydrator. You need a regular filament dryer that is mostly closed up like a Sunlu S2 for example if you want to supercharge filament drying by pumping dry air into the filament dryer.
Dehydrators have fans that circulate outside air in and out of the dehydrator but outside air can have lots of humidity. That humidity limits how much you can dry filament and how fast. Most filament dryers don’t work well because they trap moisture inside them, but that works great with a dry air supply that pushes out the moist air. It turns a problem into an asset.
4 Likes
^^^Yes, for anyone who hasn’t yet looked, MZip has done absolutely fantastic work, and his thread is well worth reading. Already, the objective evidence he has compiled for his method looks very compelling.
2 Likes
Do you have a special container of some kind for holding the desiccant as you dry it in your S4?
Yeah, printed a basket off of Makerworld. Nothing fancy
1 Like
What looks especially promising about the S4 is the rated power of 320w and the three fans to really stir up the air, hopefully helping to get to a better temperature uniformity. A surprisingly high number of filament dryers have only 50w heaters and may lack even one circulation fan. The main shortcoming seems to be the max temp of 70C, which blunts its potential capability, but that’s still enough headroom for some of the common filaments, assuming its sensors are accurate and it’s not also lying about the temperature, like some filament dryers do, by poor sensor placement, which results in reporting a higher temperature than what’s representative of the true situation.
I ordered one to supplement my other filament drying, letting me speed up my drying by helping to do more in parallel and/or pipelining. It should arrive today, so I guess we’ll see. The reviews seem generally favorable. If it’s not too loud, I may be able to run it in the conditioned space and thereby leverage the dryer air inside the house. Like Aurora Tech said, it would be nice if it were more user programmable, but that’s consumer products for you.
1 Like
I have to say for the most part it’s been transparent for me. I drop what I want to dry the day before and go on about my business. I have it set to maintain I think 35 rh, but I could be wrong, as far down as it goes. I hear it come on once in awhile.
If I need something dried somewhat quickly I’ll set it for that and about 8 hours. PA-6 and TPU95-HF I keep in there and feed from it. Works well. Usually just store ABS and the like until needed.
1 Like
Picked up this lab oven some weeks ago for 80€ in mint condition (Retail 1150€). It can hold up to 6 spools at once. Extremely happy with it.
1 Like
I bought a Sunlu S4 because 1 S4 is more cost effective.
I have not yet plumbed it up to printer yet but it sure made a big difference in the number of dimples on the printed object. Didn’t entirely eliminate them but it was a major improvement.
I had made the desiccant bead holders that go between each of the drives in the AMS with an RH indicator in the center slot.
On a whim because that center desiccant in AMS Was reading around 30% I pulled it out and put in bottom of S4.
Checked it the next day and it was reading 10% so put it back in AMS.
Somewhat question the ability of AMS to do anything significant to moisture, even with desiccant in the lower locations and those in the front of the AMS.
There is very little air mmovement in the AMS. The filament towards the center of a given spool sees zero circulation.
I think my practice going forward will be to put spools in and out of S4 based on when I’m going to use them
Well, don’t forget that your spools of filament, if you load them dry into the AMS, are themselves acting like a kind of desiccant, in that they absorb moisture from the air. So, if you’re just reading a TH sensor and watching it only slowly climb up, maybe the rate of moisture intrusion is actually worse than you think.
I did an experiment recently where I pumped relatively dry air into one of the cereal containers commonly used on this forum for filament storage. I put a TH sensor in it with no desiccnat or anything else. It returned to ambient humidity in about 4 days. From that I calculated the amount of moisture that actually penetrated, and posted it somewhere on the forum here. It turns to out not to have been much. You could do the same or similar with the AMS, and then maybe you’d have a better way of knowing for sure. You’d need to know the air volume of the AMS, or a reasonable approximation, to run the calculation though.